


the sound of a new man.

by outpastthemoat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Coda, Episode: s09e06 Heaven Can't Wait, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/outpastthemoat/pseuds/outpastthemoat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is what humans do.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sound of a new man.

He gives you a coat, a credit card, a cellphone.  He gives you a bus pass, a ticket to anywhere you might wish to go.  He gives you his hand, and you’re not sure you understand what he is offering. 

You accept his hand between your palms.  You shake his hand goodbye.  You know that this is what humans do.

You know what the cold outside is like, but it’s hard to imagine now, with the dry heat blowing out from the vent by your feet. You have an idea of what hunger will do to you, but you find that memory is difficult to recall. You take off the coat.  You hang it over the back of your seat.  You leave the credit card in the pocket and the coat on the seat when you get off at your stop.

 —

You get a job.  This is what humans do.  You stock the shelves with jars of peanut butter and bottles of ibuprofen and cans of formula for newborns.  You go through the shelves and pull out items long past their expiration date, stale doughnuts and Ritz crackers and slightly sour bottles of milk, and you pay for them with the loose change rattling deep inside the pockets of your jeans. You give yourself the forty percent discount for expired items.  You give yourself the fifteen percent discount offered to all sales associates.  You eat the doughnuts and drink the milk for breakfast and the crackers for lunch, and at night you curl up on your bedroll and try to sleep through the way your stomach goes tight and churns around, too hungry and too sick to assuage any of these pains.

You are given the option of taking breaks, if you want.  The others take theirs outside, despite the cold and the rain and the exhaust from the eighteen wheelers that park by the diesel pumps.  They wrap themselves in heavy canvas coats and stand in tight clumps and smoke, packs of Camels and Marlboro lights and Winstons, one cigarette after another, long after their fifteen minutes are up.  You stay inside.  You can’t conceive of being outside in this weather.  That is not something you feel that humans should do. 

You clean out the coffee pot behind the counter.  It quietly appeared two weeks into your employment.  You make the first pot of coffee every morning, well before any of your coworkers arrive. You rise out the coffee maker and put in a new filter and brew another pot instead of taking breaks. 

You pour fresh coffee into your coffee mug. You are careful to add only one packet of creamer.   Supplies are not unlimited.  You know.  You take the inventories.  You sign the delivery slips.

You sit in the back office, the crowded closet with the desk and the computer where Nora works on spreadsheets in the afternoons.  You sit on the folding chair against the wall and hold your coffee in your hands to warm them up. 

—

You keep the cellphone in your back pocket.  You pull it out on your breaks, sometimes.  There are games.  You like Tetris.  Sometimes you take out the cellphone even when you’re on shift, but only during those early morning shirts, that dead time between three and four a.m. when the parking lot is empty and the pumps are isolated under the streetlights. 

Sometimes you think about calling him.  Sometimes you almost do.  You are promoted to sales associate three weeks into your employment, and during the night shift you take out the phone and place it on the counter by your elbow. 

You say out loud, “I got a promotion.”  You wonder what he would say to that.  Maybe he would be pleased for you.  You’re supposed to share good news with friends, with family.  This is something humans do.  Last week Nora passed around a card for Michael, whose son returned home safely from Afghanistan.  You took the pen she handed you and wrote Congratulations, Mike, - Steve at the bottom of the card in small careful letters. 

You read the other notes, before you passed the card round to Taj.  Dan wrote, Thanking God for blessing your family.  Nora had written, I am so happy for your good news.  Mark, who spends his days off drinking beer in Michael’s garage, had written, I know you must be pretty excited to have your whole family home again Mikey.  We all missed Danny a hell of a lot. I am glad he is home & safe now.

—

Some days you wake up and change your shirt and look out the windows, streaked with dirt and grime and dust, and you want them to shatter, to fall apart so that you could step outside and walk away.  Once you could have destroyed those glass gas station windows with a single word, with the roll of the granite syllables of your own name off your heavy inhuman tongue. 

You roll out pallets loaded with boxes of domestic beer and energy drinks and grape soda and consider picking up the pricing gun and smashing it through the glass doors of the refrigerators, the dirty windows, the scratched glass of the counter tops.

You stock the drinks and your head aches, your eyes ache.  You sit down on the floor and rest your back against the pallets.  You put your head in your hands and you feel yourself crying. You feel hot wet tears on your palms, you feel hot wet tears on your cheeks and your eyelashes.

This is what humans do, you know.  This is what humans do when they are tired and hungry, when they have needs that are not being met.  This is what humans do when they stagger on and on, shoulders weighed down with despair.  This is what humans do when they know their only choice is to continue bearing their burden, with no offer of respite.

This is what humans do, you tell yourself, and you take silent heavy breaths of air and you stuff your fingers in your mouth so no one can hear.  

You wipe your face with your vest.  You place your palms on the cool glass of the refrigerator doors, you press your forehead there too.  You leave prints that you will have to wipe off later.  You load up the drinks, the Gatorades and the Coke Zeros and the Starbucks frozen frappuccinos and when you are done you close the glass doors and roll the pallets back by the dumpsters and you pick up a broken beer bottle and slam it against the side of the building.  

You stand there panting, looking down at the bits of clear brown glass catching the light of the sun and then you go back inside for the dustpan and broom.  You clean up your mess.  This is what humans do.  


End file.
